Personally, I liked it.  Granted I didn't get to play it much, but did have a little experience with it.

- Perhaps the range was too big, or there was too high of a chance that the outer edges of the range could be reached.  Ps could easily change it so that there's more of a chance that the averages are met, and then every now and then it spikes, just to throw in some strategy.

- Also, in my opinion, the market shouldn't change that quickly.  It should stay a while at a price so that it affects peoples play and strategy.  And then change every now and then to make people adapt.  If it changes too quick, people have the option of buying real cheap and then hanging on to the res up until the next change to make huge profits.

I liked that I could go and buy octarine if I wanted, when I messed up my build strat and couldn't build enough wiz to do SA and I couldn't explore for a couple of days.
I could live without that however.

For me, the difference between having a market and not having one, comes down to whether the galaxy is intended as an SS galaxy or a retro style galaxy.
In a retro gal, I would expect to see people playing SS with variations on the income/attacker strat.  You would take out the market to force people to play this way.
In an SS gal, you would have a market to allow the res based attacker strat.  You would need to set the market prices so there was no penalty/advantage to playing this over the CF based strat.
It is fair if the selling prices of eg. iron is 6, that you have a range of prices that exceeds that of the production of a cf+income bonus+econ bonus by a similar amount.  Making cf the 'stable' income, which can increase to a limited amount, and res the 'floating' income, which can drop below, or exceed the stable income.

Current market implementation has mines making anywhere from 6 to 40 gc per tick.  That's fine, we all have access to the same market, but it's certainly weighting things in the favour of those playing resource based.
To say nothing of the rapid and large swings in price which make the current market function like a broken ATM.  In this case, there is only one strat.  Produce cash, buy res.  repeat until the market rises.  Sell for massive profit.  Buy low, and repeat.  To not do that means you can't compete.  A solo player shouldn't be able to amass 37 million iron in the space of 4 weeks.  It's pumping cash and resources into the galaxy, where a normal market can only redistribute the wealth created by the players in the gal.

No market.
Market fixed at a rate comparable to CF's (taking into account cost of buildings.  Oct and End would sell for more than iron/food to reflect the cost of construction).
Market with floating prices, slow rate of fluctuation, and narrower fixed ranges than the current model.

Pick one according to the gameplay style you want in the galaxy.

Had I known the market was going to be as profitable as it is\was\has been my whole strat would have been different, including race.

I would have taken 100% speed.

It should change once a day.

NO Market or fixed at high prices

Buy at

Octarine 40
Endurium 30
Iron 15
Food 0.5

Sell at

Octarine 18
Endurium 13
Iron 6
Food 0.1

+1 to Noir, starting with fixed high prices then changing slightly as the round advances, considering the bids/sells in the previous 5 tics

I would even say a range of 5-10% of the old price

This way you always expect a change after 5 tics, but never a extreme change so the market doesnt give big advantages and we still keep the game SS

^ from my post, still selling octa at 18 gives a great profit, but hey, building OCs is way more expensive than CFs, and the space it takes, but anyway, to avoid this situation, SLIGHT changes is the solution, so when everybody starts selling octa, it goes down slightly after 5 tics, and the profit is lessen as the round advances  (or it gets balanced when someone has to buy octa urgently for a wizzie jump)

If everyone knew the market was going to do that, and that in order to play in the galaxy you'd need to use the market in that manner, then sure, it may have been good.
As a trial, we saw that some people clued in faster than others, and those that did got a jumpstart which, if properly managed, couldn't be overtaken.

Food spikes, everyone sells food.  It doesn't sell out, the price doesn't drop, everyone wins.  Those that bought food at a tenth of the price for several days win more, and take that extra into the next spike, and so on.
It only exaggerates the natural differences in growth that you expect, but it does so exponentially, and much faster.

Can you imagine such a market in a galaxy with aid?  You'd have million nw fleets within a week.  Might make for a very quick and interesting round.

I really didn't want this round to be about adapting to something new, I wanted it to be about adapting to an old and unused style of play that wasn't about being told what to do by the family growth strategist, but about individual skill, empire management, and activity.
I feel it's been ruined by free money from the market.  Even if other people have used it, chances are you have more.  What is disconcerting, is that you don't have to have a large empire to have a huge stockpile.  Beyond a certain point you don't need an income base, just cash/resources on hand.  Just sit on it and grow the fund until someone pokes you, and turn it into fleet and poke back harder.  Might be funny, but I don't like the idea at all.

Playing the market in a traditional sense takes skill to make profit, I'm okay with that.  This doesn't take skill, it just takes an awareness of the fact it's happening.  Don't approve.  Simple.

Spam do you realise that's not what Imperial Conflict is suposed to be ?? There's no skills in being lucky to catch the market at ur convenience when others aren't online.

If I would want to play something like that I'd choose Monopoly, not IC 

Render I've played since the start of IC and I've seen people dominate entire galaxies using the market, so what's going on in SD is no different than anywhere else. You could sit on 1 planet and play market for the entire round and dominate anywhere, and it's already been done. New rules were applied like decay and market fees, disbanding, all to try and keep people from doing that, but it doesn't matter. It's the fact that nobody has the patience for it anymore. The market is even, and if anything, it just speeds up what was going to happen anyways. It all involves patience and timing, of which you obviously don't have enough of. If you can't be active enough to win, using the rules that we decided upon, don't play and stop complaining about it. Go play your DSi, while the rest of us play by what rules were set forth. My 5 year old needs a challenger in Mario Kart if you're interested....

i don't see why people are complaining so much. this market has made for a lot of wars and massive jumps that have made it so much more exciting. and a load more strategies. i think its an awesome mistake, yes its based down to luck/activity, but it still has made for a lot of fun wars and more wars to come!